1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive for driving an optical disk such as a CD (Compact Disk) or DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) generally used as a recording medium, particularly to a configuration for protecting electronic components in the disk drive from static electricity generated due to an external cause and moreover to improvement of a bezel to be mounted to the front end face of the disk tray.
2. Detailed Description of the Related Art
In general, a disk drive for driving an optical disk is integrally built in a device body such as a personal computer (hereafter referred to as PC), in which information is recorded in or reproduced from the optical disk (for example, refer to Patent Documents 1 and 2). FIG. 18 shows the appearance of a notebook PC having the built-in disk drive described above. Normally, in such disk drive, a disk tray 101 pops out in accordance with a switch operation or a command from a PC body and a PC user then takes out the disk tray 101 so as to Bet an optical disk D.
FIG. 19 shows the appearance of a disk drive frequently used for notebook PCs in particular. As shown in the figure, a center hole of the optical disk D is clamped at the center of the disk tray 101 by a clamp mechanism 102a of a turntable 102 fixed to a driving shaft of a spindle motor set just below the disk tray 101 to transfer torque. Moreover, a head unit 103 mainly constituted by an optical pickup moves in the radial direction in a slit 101a formed on the disk tray 101 to record or reproduce information in or from the optical disk D. Furthermore, the disk tray 101 thus constituted is supported by a guide rail 104 so as to be housed in a chassis case 105.
FIG. 30 is an exploded perspective view showing a configuration of the front end face of the disk tray 101, in which a printed wiring sheet P is adhered to the center of the front end face of the body of the disk tray 101, and a microswitch 109 for receiving an activation signal for controlling forward and backward movements of the disk tray 101 and an LED chip 100 serving as an indicator are soldered to the printed wiring sheet P. Moreover, a bezel 111 screwed so as to cover the front end face of the disk tray 101 to outfit the front face of the disk drive is provided with a push button 120 for operating the microswitch 109 LED chip 100. Symbol 140 denotes a through-hole for forcibly canceling an unexpected locked state of the disk tray 101 by inserting a thin pin from the through-hole 140.
FIG. 31 is an illustration showing a back face of the conventional bezel 111, in which an earth plate 150 is fixed to the center through thermal caulking or the like. The earth plate 150 is set so that when the disk tray 101 is loaded, the end 150a of the plate 150 contacts with the opening of the chassis case 105 and a discharge channel is formed. Thereby, static electricity flows from a human body to the discharge channel to prevent an electrical component or the like from damaging. Moreover, a flexible spacer 160 serving as a buffering body is set to the upper edge part and a screwed tongue 110a to be fixed to the body of the disk tray 101 is formed at an essential portion of the body of the bezel 111. An end 150b of the earth plate 150 is extended to the back of the push button 120 and a protrusion 120a of the push button 120 exposed from a window hole formed on the end 150b operates the microswitch 109.
[Patent Document 1]
Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-97122
[Patent Document 2]
Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-97056
The bezel decorates the front face of the disk drive, which usually uses a bezel designed in accordance with a PC. Therefore, in many cases, a supplier delivers a finished disk drive alone with no bezel mounted on it, a PC manufacturer receiving the disk drive then manufactures an original bezel and fixes the bezel to the front face of the disk tray. However, because an earth plate is conventionally integrated with a bezel through thermal caulking the caulking cost is an obstacle to lower the production cost of the disk tray.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to simplify the above incidental processing to the utmost so that the processing cost for the assembling of the bezel can be decreased and the versatility of the disk drive is improved. Moreover, as shown in FIGS. 30 and 31, the bezel of the disk tray of the conventional disk drive has element components necessary for the bezel, namely, the push button 120, transparent lens 130, earth plate 150, and spacer 160 to serve the bezel as an outfit body. Accordingly, the bezel is usually designed to be match with the PC body and it is desirable that the bezel is formed by the same color and same material with the PC body.
However, in the case of a manufacture and supply system for manufacturing a disk drive alone and supplying it to unspecified users such as many manufacturers of PCs, because manufacturers of PC bodies are completely different from those of disk drives, it is difficult to realize a bezel whose design, color tone, and texture coincide with those of the PC body which is built in by a supplied destination of the disk drive, by the difference between manufactures of PC body and the disk drive. As a solution for such problem, an user received a finished disk drive prepares only a bezel and replace the bezel already set by the disk drive manufacturer with the one prepared by the user, or the user receives a disk drive with no bezel mounted and sets an original bezel to the disk drive, namely manage the problem with so-called post-mount processing.
When using the above method, the user received the disk drive needs to originally design the bezel and element components to be built in the bezel and prepare a molding die or the like to manufacture the bezel. Consequently, the user must shoulder a great deal of economic burden. In addition, despite of the effort made by the user to manufacture the original bezel, a design including errors compared to the finished bezel may be done and the initial performance may be deteriorated. For example, the shape of an earth plate which is an element component differs or when the earth plate is not built in, the resistance of the disk drive to static electricity is deteriorated and therefore, the risk of damage on the electronic components rises. Moreover, the structural consistency with the disk tray is deteriorated because the bezel was originally designed, so the bezel may vibrate and generate noises or the operation feeling of the disk tray may be deteriorated.